The Remarkable SaaS Podcast

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to give us back the energy and power to do the things where human intelligence and imagination shine. My guest is Ilia Zelenkin, CEO Bitskout. Ilia spent close to 15 years of his career at Nokia, ultimately as head of product & service innovation, Global Services. He then co-founded SafeRoom, a control center for Encrypted Data. In 2020 he co-founded Bitskout which he's heading up as the CEO. He's passionate about technology changing the world, excited to build Star Trek alike futures, and solving problems that matter.  What gets him out of bed every morning is his passion to help people become happier doing their work. The thought that 83% of people who go to work today are disengaged makes him triple his efforts. Bitskout was founded to free people up to do creative and meaningful work and with that bring back passion and satisfaction to the job. Their mission is to give us the affordable tools to make it happen NOW. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Ilia to my podcast. We explore what's broken in managing projects within small companies - and why we should not accept the waste that goes on with that. Ilia shares his vision about how to make the most advanced technology affordable and the journey he's on to turn his intelligence platform into an expert platform that could not only forecast your work but check it later on as well. We also dig into his first principles to create solutions that create a pull from users i.e. a desire for more. Here are some of his quotes "what I did, I wrote every any crazy, stupid ideas that I had in my head for six months, five ideas per day, anything crazy. Anything that comes to mind. And eventually, what happened, you start noticing patterns, and you start noticing things, how they're connected. They came up with the problem, and it was a combination, a sequence of problems. So number one was building solutions to help deliver teams' projects faster. And I noticed that we couldn't breach a certain kind of project waste percentage. So we always were losing around 30% of the project times on some stupid things." During this interview, you will learn four things: That the ability to invent something is a skill - a muscle that you can train That the best roadmap choices start with minimum viable experiments How to optimize your pricing strategy so it incentivizes desired behavior That it takes the same amount of effort to do something great - so why settle for something mediocre For more information about the guest from this week: Ilia Zelenkin Website Bitskout Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that gives B2B SaaS businesses the opportunity to increase their value by making their product multiplayer.  My guest is Nimrod Priell, CEO of Cord. Nimrod has been a software pioneer from the very first start. He's got over 20 years of experience in development, data science, and product management and decided in 2019 it was time to make the jump to take on the entrepreneur role. He loves thinking about how we work and how we can make that experience better.  This is exactly why he started Cord. With a team of designers, engineers, and product craftspeople that have collected some secrets from their tenures at leading tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Adobe - they are on a mission to leverage those secrets to make collaboration at work more effective. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Nimrod to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the way SMEs can create true value from their ever-growing SaaS stack. We discuss the underlying problem and what needs to change in the mindset of the SaaS Vendor community to cross the chasm that will bring more value for all. Lastly, Nimrod shares his views on what it takes to build a SaaS business that cannot be ignored. Here are some of his quotes "The average SME today, Okta says, has over 90 different SaaS tools. So I saw how these companies work internally, with a lot of tools that are bought, not built-in, and don't have this 'connective tissue.' The tools are built single player and all the communication around them gets stuffed into Slack and inbox. I saw this as a problem because these are b2b SaaS vendors, and this is a problem for their clients." During this interview, you will learn four things: Why the winners in the next decade in SaaS will be the one's building collaboration in their tools Why complacency in SaaS is the biggest risk of becoming irrelevant - and what to do about it.  How turning away a lot of business can be a very solid way to grow fast A secret to creating a viral effect with the products you build For more information about the guest from this week: Nimrod Priell Website Cord Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to finally prevent us from relying on anecdotes that lead to biased decisions and with that build products customers love. My guest is Daniel Erickson, Founder, and CEO of Viable. Daniel has been active in software development since 2006. He took an untraditional path from most. Together with his co-founder he skipped college altogether and straight out of high school created a consulting firm in Portland to help early-stage companies build their very first products, create MVPs, get their first users, and/or get their first investment.  After doing the same thing over and over again for clients as a consultant, he really wanted to dig into a longer-term problem. And being an early member of the Node.js community where he helped organize a lot of conferences, got him an early engineering job at Yammer. From there he moved to Getable where he was the CTO, and to Eaze where he was VP of Engineering. Today, he's the founder and CEO of Viable. Viable is on a mission is to help us better and more quickly understand what customers are telling us, so we can immediately find the most important things we should be working on. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Daniel to my podcast. We explore the challenges many SaaS businesses face in finding product-market fit. Daniel shares his experiences, and what's required to do / not to do in order achieve this - whether you build a product from the ground up, or evolve an existing product.  He also shares his experiences that not every product is fit for a product-led growth approach, and what it takes to spark adoption and to grow meaningful traction. Last but not least he leaves his views on what it takes to build a software business the world talks about. Here are some of his quotes "It actually came from my time at Gettable. And I spent four years there, trying to find product-market fit, and never quite found. But I did learn a lot about collecting customer feedback, using customer feedback to guide a roadmap. And it just kind of got me obsessed with this idea of using customer feedback to build a really great product. So I started actually looking around on that one and came up with this idea to go tackle that. So the initial spark was actually solving my own problem. It was I knew I was going to have to solve the product-market fit problem at some point. And I knew that customer feedback was the best way to improve a product. I actually came across a blog post from Rahul Vora about how Superhuman found product-market fit, I applied some of those ideas to the system. And then went off to the races from there and quickly realized that this was a larger problem than early-stage startups." During this interview, you will learn four things: That it can take years to find product-market-fit if you are not making some critical choices Why it's way easier to design and build a remarkable product when you got a very specific user in mind. How to create products that result in jaw-drop moments every time you demo it. That just solving a customers problem doesn't mean that you're going to have a product that grows For more information about the guest from this week: Daniel Erickson Website Viable See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to grow our happiness and connectivity at work - especially when we're part of a distributed team. My guest is Scott Markovits, CEO Spontaneousli. Over the past 8 years, Scott has worked with over 1000 early-stage founders and startups, helping them build the foundations of successful products, companies, and teams.  He's passionate about building awesome new products and creating amazing employee experiences. Another aspect he's fascinated about is: Remote work So much that he's hosting a podcast, Leading from afar, that's all about remote leadership ad sharing experiences, wisdom, and tools to make remote successful at companies all around the world.  And this inspired him to start his own Startup, Spontaneousli - A company that's on a mission to make remote work more awesome. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Scott to my podcast. We explore how switching to a remote-first world has created a range of new challenges - some very valuable to solve. Just think about the Great Resignation. We discuss the innovation opportunity ahead - and how big impact can be created with seemingly very simple solutions. Scott shares how complacency and comfort in sticking to traditional thinking can put the best companies in harmful situations. Last but not least he shares his views on creating a remarkable software business and why bootstrapping should be considered by more SaaS companies. Here are some of his quotes: If you read articles around remote work or the future of work, many of the companies have been very positive, saying: Productivity has been through the roof. We can get work done. Everything's fantastic on the work side, but we want to get people back into the office because we're missing out on the engagement and the happiness and those bursts of inspiration. I see it is really a lacking of tools. During this interview, you will learn four things: That we often make the mistake of creating solutions that literally mimic what we think needs to be done, without thinking about what it needs to achieve. Why often it's not the quality of the solution that prevents creating traction, but our inability to change human behaviors  Why we shouldn't be obsessed with Product-Market fit, but with Problem-Market fit. Why avoid going the funding route and focus on building a SaaS business that's sustainable. For more information about the guest from this week:  Scott Markovits Website Spontaneousli Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s   Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here   It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to enable desk-less workers to perform at their highest potential, with minimal intervention to their workday. My guest is Rami Darwish, Founder, and CEO of Arrow Labs Rami is a founder and entrepreneur in digital technology for the enterprise and b2b segment. He has a deep understanding of business growth and scale strategy. He's an expert in workforce management and digitalization of the field operation and beyond that, he has a deep understanding of mobility in the enterprise.  In 2011 he founded Arrow Labs a company that's on a mission to provide companies pioneering and reliable workforce management solutions that impact their people and operations in a meaningful way. It envisions a world where employees can connect, collaborate and perform at their highest potential, with minimal intervention to their workday. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Rami to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the world of the desk-less worker and how this negatively impacts efficiency, accuracy, customer service, and safety. Rami shares the approach they've taken to enable field workers to deliver their best work in the toughest conditions. He also details what they did to not only survive the pandemic but come out stronger altogether. Last but not least he shares his experiences in creating momentum, especially in a market that hasn't got a change or growth mindset. Here are some of his quotes: I used to work for fortune 500, corporate companies in the tech space. And I was working on large projects that would cover an entire city, for example, a safe city project or an integrated city project. And we have a lot of tools, everything from video wall tools to access to databases and information in real-time.  But when you're doing a large city-type project, you're interacting with the real world. You're not sitting in a bubble, you're interacting with people, workers in the street, frontline people that either are providing you valuable information, or you need to provide them valuable information. What I realized while I was doing that was: Oh my God,...as soon as we want to get information out to the front line or get information from the frontline back into the HQ, everything stops being digital became manual. During this interview, you will learn four things: How to avoid wasting lots of energy, time, and money by focusing your efforts on people who believe what you believe Why you should always strategize about the two or three moves ahead - plan early - do a lot of smaller executive steps ahead of time  That there's a fine line between being capital efficient and missing an opportunity - take chances. Why every opportunity should start with the simple question: Do I firmly believe in it?  For more information about the guest from this week: Rami Darwish Website Arrow Labs Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here   It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to relieve salespeople from having to use CRM, so they can focus on what they're best at: In the moment selling. My guest is Adam Honig, CEO of Spiro AI Adam has worked my entire career in the technology industry. His specialty is building companies and organizations that sell and deliver enterprise software and solutions in the B2B space.  All of the companies that he helped found were focused on dramatically improving their operations. Two of these companies went public, and two of them were successfully sold at favorable valuations. Although much has changed in the technology business since he started his career he believes a few things always remain the same: it's all about the business outcomes and not the technology itself. And you can never go wrong telling the truth. It's never worth it working with a jerk. And being the category king should always be your goal. After watching the movie 'Her' which shares a vision of artificial intelligence, played by the voice of Scarlett Johansson guiding sales reps to larger commission checks, he knew it was time to transform CRM and deliver the outcomes the world had been waiting for.  Today he's the CEO of Spiro, a proactive relationship management platform. Spiro is on a mission to end an era where companies waste millions of dollars on CRM. How? By creating a platform that works for Salespeople, instead of the other way around.  And this inspired me, and hence I invited Adam to my podcast. We explore what's broken in CRM and how the things CRM demands its users to do is fundamentally flawed. Adam shares why the problem won't be solved by making existing solutions look nicer, but that the solution is in doing things completely differently.  We dig into the journey Spiro has been through to get traction and how it overcame the tough battle to get people to adopt new technologies. He also shares the big lessons learned in deeply understanding the real outcomes customers want to solve and what it requires to build a software business that stands out in a dense market. Here are some of his quotes: Really good salespeople are really good 'in the moment'. Having the conversation really listening well, understanding what's happening. They're not the same people who are good at then typing all of that up. It's just it's a different skill. And so the things that CRM asks them to do are the things that they're bad at. It's structurally flawed. And so, the salespeople who are really good at updating the CRM are the really bad salespeople. I had one sales VP telling me when he takes over a new job as a VP of sales, he looks to see who does the best job at CRM, and he fires those salespeople. Crazy. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why we have to stop creating solutions that demand users to do things they're not good at and principally despise. Focus on what they need to be successful instead. That often the only way to deliver remarkable impact is doing the hard things first.  Why we should do away with the preconceived notion we know our domain like no one else - it can seriously get you stuck in sales Why it's key to set your ego aside as a CEO and invest time listening to your customers. Not leadership, but actual users. Not once, but weekly. For more information about the guest from this week: Adam Honig Website Spiro AI See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to end the era of being inundated with media every single day. And my guest is Gregory Lim, Co-founder, and CEO of Persosa. Greg was the former CMO of Lifelock, and the founder of Qual & Quant, a full-service strategy, finance, and marketing agency. He combines his background in finance and marketing and believes that great marketing is the perfect combination of math and magic. He likes to challenge the status quo - and for one the market believes that a 3% conversion rate is normal in digital marketing.  This is why he co-founded Persosa in 2016, a startup that's on a mission to solve the challenge of creating media experiences consumers love without them feeling interrupted by the information they’re not interested in, and doing this all while continuing to bring in needed revenue and keeping advertisers happy. And that inspired me, and hence I invited Gregory to my podcast. We explore what's broken in digital marketing and how the disconnect with what's normal in the real world is leading to many inconvenient and often creepy experiences. He shares the big idea behind his company and how this will help brands to have more organic, natural conversations with their clients - leading to higher, and faster conversion. He also shares the big lessons learned in building his company, what's been instrumental to where Persosa is right now, and what he'd do differently next time. Here are some of his quotes: "Just recently, we started focusing on building partnerships with these large media companies, specifically in TV and web publishing. So an example today is: you're watching television, you see an ad for a Ford F150 truck. Like most Americans, 97% of people watch TV with a second device in their hand. You see this great ad for a truck. You say: I want to learn more about it. You go to ford.com, and they show you a minivan. That's a real lost opportunity. Not only for the company, but it's a disconnected conversation with the consumer." During this interview, you will learn four things: That building a product that drives transformative change is not enough. The other thing is how to remove all critical barriers to adopting it. How critical it is to understand what your customers want, but then layer in your vision and give them something beyond what they're asking for.  Be aggressive in those areas where you can learn what resonates with your customers instead of burning your marketing budgets (how conservative they might be)  How getting to Break Even first opens a lot of doors and opportunities to control your growth rate and gives leverage when you talk to investors. For more information about the guest from this week: Gregory Lim Website Persosa Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to the personal development and aging challenge for all of us. My guest is mil Jimenez, Founder, and CEO of Mind Bank AI Emil Jimenez is a marketing expert with over 18 years working on global campaigns. He started working in the communications industry as a web designer in NYC. In 2009 he opened Passion Communications in Prague with the vision of building a brand empire for himself and his clients.  Since 2020 Emil has set out to produce the most transformational idea of his life. This was the birth of Mind Bank AI - a company that's on a mission to allow humanity to go beyond their limits and live forever through data.  What started as daddy’s quest for immortality has expanded into something bigger for humanity because the next personal computer is you. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Emil to my podcast. We explore how observing his little daughter sparked an idea that turned into a vision that could potentially solve some of the world's biggest problems. Preventing Mental health issues by increasing mental strength, providing education and access to expert knowledge for those that need it most, new ways of knowledge monetization, and even immortality.  Emil shares the insights from the journey he's been on to bring this from idea to reality. Last but not least he explains his secrets to creating a software business that we'd miss if were gone. Here are some of his quotes: So Mind Bank is a platform for you to create a digital twin of yourself. We want to make a platform for people to bridge AI, and move humanity to what we call AI-enhanced humanity. It's not about the metaverse because the MetaVerse is all about living in another place. Now we're more concerned about ThisVerse. How do I take the AI and data and all the sides that we have to make me or make you a better person and help you in your personal development?And ultimately, store your wisdom. How much wisdom and knowledge is lost when people pass away, especially in family wisdom? So we have the technology to not only learn about ourselves and optimize ourselves, but also that wisdom could last forever - and add value to your family forever. And that's really building this database of humanity. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why having an eye for what matters - and for the things we'd miss if they were gone - is a fantastic source to spark meaningful innovation  That even if everyone is blown away with your big idea is not a guarantee funding will flow in. Never underestimate this. Why thinking big and long-term will make it a lot easier to keep focused and overcome critical challenges short-term. Why thinking about money should come last in all the strategic decisions you make For more information about the guest from this week: Emil Jimenez Website Mind Bank AI Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s A weekly musing on how to shape the B2B SaaS business your customers just keep talking about. Learn from the most inspiring ideas I've encountered or explored this week that could help you find new ways to stand out, eliminate the need to compete on price, and make tangible progress in creating a SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone.   Subscribe here See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to ​​help companies to build trust towards their customers and close deals faster by putting their privacy compliance on autopilot. My guest is Stine Mangor Tornmark, Co-founder and CEO of Openli. Stine has 10+ years of experience as a lawyer from Plesner law firm and Trustpilot. At Trustpilot, she built up Trustpilot’s Legal and Compliance teams and processes from when the company had one office with 70 employees to 850 employees across the globe. She believes that privacy is a fundamental right every individual has and should have.  She realized the struggle she had at Trustpilot to comply around privacy - and that's a large company with deep pockets and a large legal team. Imagine then how small and medium-sized businesses struggle. It's almost an impossible task. And that's why she co-founded Openli in 2018, a Legal Tech startup that's on a mission to help companies become better data citizens. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Stine to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the world of proving compliance around privacy data as a business. We dig into why this is the case, and why it's so hard to solve. Stine then shares the approach they've taken to solve the problem - and the hurdles she had to overcome in doing so. We discuss what it took to create momentum and end up with a customers base that's close to 100% referenceable and how that required them to think differently about what their product needed to be all about. Here are some of her quotes: in 2018, I was sitting at a lunch table complaining and really just emphasizing the difficulties of ensuring compliance across all these different nationalities and countries. And my co founder said: 'there has to be service out there, Stine. There has to be.' And he started looking for one and we couldn't find any. And you know, when the butterflies start to flap and you get the tingling in your body. That's how I felt at that point. And that's why we founded Openli. During this interview, you will learn four things: Where to strategically focus your investments when you're starting a SaaS business How you turn something that's perceived as a cost of doing business into a competitive advantage for your customers How to go about creating momentum when nobody is looking for your SaaS solution How to keep your SaaS business on track when adversity hits - and how to come out stronger?  For more information about the guest from this week: Stine Mangor Tornmark Website Openli Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s A weekly musing on how to shape the B2B SaaS business your customers just keep talking about. Learn from the most inspiring ideas I've encountered or explored this week that could help you find new ways to stand out, eliminate the need to compete on price, and make tangible progress in creating a SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone.   Subscribe here See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that gives each of us the power to fulfill our potential without sacrificing all the other good things in life. My guest is Manuel Bruschi, Founder, and CEO of Timeular. Manuel is a former web developer that has been recognized as a Forbes 30 under 30, a Ted speaker, and also a former Austrian National Champion in Rugby 7’s! He's passionate about the most important resource for a life worth living: Time. That's why he co-founded Timeular in 2015. Timeular is a B2B SaaS business that empowers people to track their job routines to then analyze and design better ones. It's on a mission to help 10M+ people to live a more healthy and rewarding work-life And this inspired me, and hence I invited Manuel to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the current market for timesheet applications. Why no matter how simple we make these apps, people still won't use them. He then shares how's found the simplest possible solution to the problem: A handshake with your time. We then drill into the journey to take this from an idea into reality and what hurdles he had to overcome to create momentum (and keep the momentum). Last but not least he shares how he's shaped his organization to be customer-obsessed in everything they do in order to build products their customers cannot live without. Here are some of his quotes: We are making something that many people find very annoying way more simple and way more fun. That's the obvious benefit they get. But then when people actually start to track their time, immediately and more in detail, they see where their time is really going. Because the funny thing about time is: our perception of time is distorted by our emotions. One hour of fun feels like five minutes, and one hour of something boring feels like five hours. That's why we always think those nice things don't take as much time as we think. And the boring things take way more time than we think. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why not only focusing on business value - but as well on user value will help to create momentum That a product is only worth developing if people are prepared to pay a premium for it. That it's not only about creating launch momentum but about securing long-term retention The value in obtaining a frugal mindset to build a product that people want to use the entire day For more information about the guest from this week: Manuel Bruschi Website Timeular Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s A weekly musing on how to shape the B2B SaaS business your customers just keep talking about. Learn from the most inspiring ideas I've encountered or explored this week that could help you find new ways to stand out, eliminate the need to compete on price, and make tangible progress in creating a SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone.   Subscribe here See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices